


Ghosts in Ultraviolet

by Destinyawakened



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: AU, Fix-it fic, Friendship, Gen, Keeping Promises, M/M, Time Travel, endgame spoilers, how it should have ended
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 16:46:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,559
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18782188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Destinyawakened/pseuds/Destinyawakened
Summary: Steve tells Bucky he's going back in time to be with Peggy, but maybe that's not exactly how it happens.A fix-it fic, obviously.





	Ghosts in Ultraviolet

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lady_Darkness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lady_Darkness/gifts).



> Beta'd by my lovely friend. Consider this an opening for whatever YOU want to happen. Steve and Bucky end up together? Neat. They're just friends getting through shit together? Awesome. I'm just putting out my two cents into the world with how I would have preferred this. (If this is close to another one, apologies, I haven't read any fix-it fics yet as I don't like being tainted by others' ideas).

“Listen, Buck,” Steve said, quietly, sitting close to his best friend at the end of the bed, thigh to thigh, hand on his knee, where it warmed the denim under his palm, against Bucky’s skin. Close and warm like this, Bucky leaned a little closer, the conversation just between them, tucked away into the guest room of Stark’s house.

Steve smiled a little, brows furrowed slightly in thought, creasing in a way that made Bucky want to reach up and press it out with his thumb. “I think I could make a life for myself and Peggy if I go back in time. It’d be a different timeline, nothing would change here…” Steve swallowed, squeezing Bucky’s knee. “But I… I won’t do it, Buck, not if you need me.”

Of course. Of course, Steve would leave it up to him, and Bucky would be forced to roll over and lie down. All he’d ever wanted for Steve was for him to be safe and happy. He just thought maybe that’d be with him, maybe, someday. The Skype calls in Wakanda, the long nights on the phone T’challa gave him-- Bucky really thought, he really did, that Steve was staying. The thought that he’d be without Steve _forever_ after this point made his stomach squirm, dropping so far down he thought he might puke.

Flesh hand over Steve’s, Bucky turned it and clasped the metal one over it, gazing at his best friend, up close. Steve was always oblivious. _Always._ “I would never stand in your way, Steve, if that’s what will make you happy. It’s...a risk.”

“A risk?”

“We know people moved on from that time, you’d be changing how it should be, like Banner explained, a new timeline, Steve.” It felt wrong, but Steve seemed desperate to find some sort of happiness and life in the shambles post-Stark. Everyone wanted a little dawn in their years of night.

“Then no one gets hurt in this one. Nothing changes here,” Steve explained and Bucky sighed, clasping Steve’s one hand with both.

“Alright, if that’s what you really want, you should do it. Go for it, Steve.” Who was Bucky to be selfish? Steve deserved better, anyway.

“Really, Buck?” Steve’s eyes were glossy and bright, elated if not a little worried, as those lines didn’t soften at all with Bucky’s answer.

Bucky nodded, slipping his hands away and stood with Steve, patting his shoulder. “Yeah. Really. C’mon, Banner’s probably waiting.”

“Thanks, Buck.”

***

There was no surprise in Bucky’s eyes when Steve didn’t make it back. His hands buried deep in his pockets, listening to Banner try to figure out what happened, and Sam yelling at him to get Cap back. He wasn’t coming back, he actually stayed. Sam noticed first and touched Bucky’s arm, bringing him back to the present.

“He… wanted to stay behind and be with Peggy,” Bucky said, calm and serious, but Sam raised a brow and gave him a look. 

“Oh? He told you that? And you just let him go?”

“What was I gonna do? Hold him back?” Bucky canted his head, having already come to terms with it since he talked to Steve. He’d find some way to cope, somewhere to go… Couldn’t stay here, that was for certain. He was positive most of the Avengers left weren’t going to take to him well.

“You let him leave you, man. For a girl. After all, that whining and moping about Steve and you let him go?” Sam shook his head, hands on his hips. “ _And_ he’s messin’ with time.”

Banner banged on a few things and the machine started up again.

“It’s another timeline, not this one.”

“Doesn’t matter. Oh man, Now _I’m_ mad.”

“Sam, calm down. It’s fine. I said it--” Bucky was stopped short when the machine whirled back to life, and form started to appreciate back on the platform.

“I think I’ve got him!” Banner called out.

***

The weirdest one was putting the soul stone back. Then again, trying to stick Jane wasn’t easy either, but at the end of it all, and few weeks in, Steve finally managed to get every last one back into their original places, ending with The Ancient One.

“Tell Bruce thank you,” she said with a nod, placing the stone back into the amulet.

“I will when I see him again,” Steve said, elusively, and nodded his head. He set device wrapped around his hand and then disappeared, back to a year after he’d been in ice, to Peggy’s doorstep.

The white and red suit disappeared back into the device, and Steve stood there on Peggy’s doorstep, taking a long moment, deciding what he’d say, what he’d do, what he’d have to explain to her. Maybe, just maybe this had been a bad idea. Steve turned to leave, to suit back up when the door opened, and heels hurried out after him, down the first step.

“Steve?” Perfectly painted nails caught the sleeve of his shirt. Steve turned, facing Peggy, young like he remembered her. Her eyes were wide and sparkling, painted lips trembling. “It can’t be. You’re-- They…”

Steve hushed her with a smile and offered his arm to her, to walk her back inside. “I have a lot to explain if you’ll let me.”

“Please.”

***

They talked over coffee for hours. Steve only explained what he needed, but mostly they reminisced over the past, and stories, as they both knew he couldn’t tell her much about the future, only that he had come from it. A version of it, anyway. Through the conversation, Steve couldn’t help but feel as though something was amiss, a part of him wasn’t settled into this life he had planned to pursue, but what it was, he couldn’t pinpoint exactly yet.

Standing, Steve offered his hand for Peggy and she took it. “I think I promised you a dance.”

Lifted to her feet, Steve wrapped an arm around her waist and they swayed gently, the song “It's Been a Long, Long Time” started on the record player, but what Steve felt wasn’t comfort, but rather a memory, and longing all at once.

“Did you come all the way back in time to keep that promise, Captain Rogers?” she asked, looking up at him, bare toed now.

Steve held his breath when she looked at him like that, as though she was seeing right through him, into the depths of his soul where even he had not been able to see until now. That empty feeling, that emptiness for a family, it wasn’t being filled by Peggy, it was still deep in his chest, and growing. 

“I did,” were the words that fell from Steve’s mouth before he could think twice. It was natural to say it was the reason, because he knew now that his home was with a different sort of family. “Couldn’t leave my best girl hanging.”

Peggy shook her head as Steve spun her out a little and pulled her back in gently. “That’s a good choice.” She patted his chest. “You cannot change the past, Steve, but you can fight for the future, and yours is still out there.”

Though he knew he could, right here and now, Steve knew she was right. Going back to the past to do it over wasn’t going forward, it was literally going backwards. He’d moved on from this, and he knew Peggy would, as well.

“Still the smartest woman I know.”

***

“Steve?” Sam called as the form completely appeared once more on the landing pad.

“Yeah, Sam.” Steve stepped down and Banner immediately looked him over, worried.

“You missed your mark. We were worried,” he murmured, shaking his head, while Steve brushed him off.

“I’m fine. It took a little longer than I expected it to.” Steve looked around and saw Bucky, gaping at him in disbelief. Suit shut down, Steve went over and hugged Bucky tight around the shoulders, holding it longer this time, as he should have before.

“I thought you were staying,” Bucky whispered, afraid to let go now, that Steve would change his mind and go back. Or maybe this was just a ghost…

“No, I upheld a promise and then came back.” Steve pulled back and looked Bucky in the eye, really seeing him this time. “I’m sorry, Buck. I don’t know what I was thinking, leaving you behind.”

“Damn right you didn’t,” Sam cracked from behind them, earning a look from Bucky for a split second.

Steve chuckled, shaking his head back at Sam, and then to Bucky once more. “Let’s… go find a quiet place and buy you some goats,” he teased.

Bucky rolled his eyes. “We can just bring Sam with us, he bleats enough we won’t need any goats.”

“Hey, man, c’mon. You _love_ me,” Sam said, walking over to join them.

“Yeah, like I loved my great aunt Bertha.”

“How can you not like an aunt named Bertha?” Sam scoffed.

Steve smiled over Sam’s shoulder at Bucky, catching his eye as his best friend smiled back at him, irises lit up with the emotion. Everything was going to be okay, and maybe it was going to need a little work, but they’d make it.

“Hey, Sam?” Steve said as they walked back to the building.

“Yeah, Cap?”

“How do you feel about taking up the Shield?”

~


End file.
